


Take Care

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode: s11e23 Alpha and Omega, Headspace, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 03:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7084540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is dying. He is going to die in a matter of hours, and there’s nothing Castiel can do to change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Care

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to [cecilia](http://femmechester.tumblr.com/) for making sure this cheery little fic turned out even more tragic than originally intended :D

God is dying. There will not be time for everything he has to answer for.

“I looked everywhere for you,” Castiel says, anyway.

“I know,” Chuck says.

“You knew we needed you,” Castiel says, “and you did nothing.”

“I know,” Chuck says. He’s staring at his feet. He flicks his eyes up only briefly, barely meeting Castiel’s gaze. “I brought you back,” he adds, like an afterthought.

Castiel isn’t surprised. He’s always felt like an afterthought.

“That’s not good enough,” Castiel says.

Chuck sighs. He says, “I know.”

\--

Dean is dying. He is going to die in a matter of hours, and there’s nothing Castiel can do to change that.

Right now, though, Dean is taking him for a ride. They’re sitting together in the front seat of the Impala and Dean is saying, _You’re our brother, our family._ This is the highest praise Dean knows how to give, but Castiel still gets the impression Dean wants to be saying something else.

He doesn’t call him on it. He has a few ideas about what else it is Dean wants to say. There are things Castiel wants to say, too. He thinks maybe there’s some overlap between their silences.

He opens his mouth, but his words die on his lips. All he manages to say is _Thank you._

It doesn’t matter. There isn’t time for any of it. There will never be any time.

\--

Sam and Dean’s mother is dead. She is gone and this is all they have of her -- a marker for an empty grave in a state they have never called their home.

Sam and Dean are standing at Mary’s grave and they are thinking very different things. Dean, right now, is winking at his mother’s headstone. He is thinking, _Hey, mom. See you soon._

Castiel is thinking of all the people they’ve loved and lost. He’s thinking of what Dean had told him and also of what he hadn’t.

Chuck says, “You should tell him.”

Castiel says, “It wouldn’t change anything.”

Chuck says, “I know.”

Castiel doesn’t even sigh. He is not surprised about it any more -- about the things God knows but doesn’t change. He has accepted that God is a disappointment.

Castiel hugs Dean as tight as he can, and instead of saying what he wants to say -- _I love you_ or _I need you, too_ or _We’re finally back together and I don’t want you to go_ \-- instead he says, _I could go with you._ Saying anything else would be unfair to Dean. He doesn’t say, _I wanted to live with you, but I would settle for making sure you don’t have to die alone._

Dean says _No._ Dean says, _Take care of Sam._ Castiel knows this is the greatest way Dean could express his trust in him.

At this exact moment, twenty feet away, Sam is pressing his fingers to his lips, his fingers to his mother’s grave, and he is thinking, _Hey, mom. Take care of him for me, will you?_

Castiel doesn’t ask, _Who’s going to take care of me?_ That wouldn't be fair, either.

\--

Dean is dead.

Sam and Castiel are driving back to the bunker and Dean is dead.

Castiel is sitting in the passenger seat. It’s strange and quiet without Dean here -- without Dean turning the music up too loud, without Dean cracking jokes, without Dean drumming his hands on the steering wheel.

Castiel is watching Sam out of the corner of his eye. He’s thinking of Sam, hugging Dean goodbye. In that moment, every inch of him had looked the part of the younger brother.

Sam is clenching is jaw, is clenching his fists around the wheel. He is doing his best to hide his grief, Castiel knows, because he knows Sam. Sam never wants to burden anyone with his problems, so Sam isn’t saying anything.

“Sam,” Castiel says softly. “Are you all right?”

Sam lets out a shaky laugh. Appropriate, Castiel thinks, given the absurdity of the question he’s just been asked.

“No,” Sam says. “God, no, I--” His voice catches and he has to stop. He lets go of the steering wheel just long enough to swipe his hand across his eyes. He clears his throat. “Guess I should stop invoking God’s name, now, huh?” Sam swallows hard. He readjusts his grip on the steering wheel.

Castiel aches. “Sam,” he says.

“It’s fine,” Sam says. “I’ll be fine.”

Castiel leaves it at that. He lets the silence settle back around them. It’s broken only by the sound of Sam’s stomach rumbling, hours later.

“We should stop to eat,” Castiel says, because Sam should take care of himself, but right now, he won’t. Because Castiel is going to try his best to take care of Sam in the meantime. He would have tried, anyway, even if Dean hadn’t asked.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Okay.”

They pull off at the next exit, and their meal, too, is spent largely in silence. Sam’s eyes are red, his voice -- during the rare moments he speaks -- rough and nasally. He eats his food slowly, mechanically.

Castiel takes it all in, every sign of Sam’s distress, and he wants to say, _Me, too. This is what I’m feeling, too._ He suspects it would not be his place.

Instead, he waits quietly for Sam to finish eating. Sam heads off to us the bathroom before they get back on the road, and Castiel says, “I’ll wait in the car.”

Castiel sits in the passenger seat of the Impala, and while he waits for Sam, he finally lets himself be upset. In spite of everything, his body is still a vessel, still a container for his grace, and he has a level of control over it that most people don’t. But if there was ever a moment to loosen his hold on that control, he thinks, this is it. He watches himself fall apart in the side mirror, watches tears roll down the sides of his face, watches his eyes grow red. He lets himself feel his breath hitch and his sinuses clog.

And then, when he can see Sam walking from the diner towards the car, he waves his hand. A flick of the wrist and all visible evidence of his grief is gone.

Castiel looks at his reflection in the side mirror, and he tells himself, “I’m fine.”

\--

Castiel feels like he is dying. He spent months possessed by Lucifer, feeling like every cell in his body, every speck of his grace, was being torn apart from the inside out. He thinks this is more painful.

It takes him the rest of the drive and then some to muster the courage and composure to ask what he really meant to. He’s caught up in asking Sam if he wants to talk about it, by which he means he wants to talk about it -- wants the reassurance anyway, wants to say _I loved him and I never told him_ and selfishly wants to hear Sam say _He knew and he loved you too,_ because he knows sometimes Sam will say things Dean won’t -- he’s so caught up in this imagined scenario that he doesn’t notice the woman until it’s too late.

He is banished from the bunker, and when he comes to, he has no idea where he is. He lies on his back in the grass and he goes over what he knows: She had blood dripping from one hand and a gun in the other, she had a look about her like she wouldn’t hesitate to take aim and fire, he was supposed to take care of Sam and he already failed, she got into the bunker without leaving any sign of forced entry and she’s dangerous, he’s aching and flightless and now truly alone and he failed and Dean is dead and--

He tells himself, _Get up._ It’s what Dean would have wanted.


End file.
